1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of navigation in GPS-enabled mobile computing devices and more particularly to personalized location-based navigational instructions for disaster alerting systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the world each year, natural hazards cause hundreds of deaths and cost billions of dollars in disaster aid, disruption of commerce, and destruction of homes and critical infrastructure. Tsunamis have the highest potential for causing catastrophic casualties, property damage, and economic disruption. Rapid changes of the seafloor, mainly caused by earthquakes, can generate a tsunami which is a series of traveling ocean waves of extreme length. Tsunamis have also been caused by the eruption of coastal and island volcanoes, submarine land slides, and oceanic impacts of large meteorites.
Other agencies rely on U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) information to help them fulfill their responsibilities regarding natural hazards. For example, the National Weather Service (NWS) relies on USGS real-time information for developing forecasts and issuing flood watches and warnings. The NWS also relies on data from USGS-supported seismic networks as a primary input for tsunami warnings.
When a tsunami reaches the coast and moves inland, tsunami waves can flood or inundate low lying coastal areas. Tsunami inundation is the horizontal, inland penetration of waves from the shoreline. Inundation distances can vary greatly along the shorelines, depending on the intensity of the tsunami waves, the undersea features, and the land topographic elevations. One coastal community may see no damaging wave activity, while another nearby community can be attacked by large and violent waves. Flooding can extend inland by several hundred meters, covering large expanses of land with water and debris.
Tsunami warnings have typically been communicated to individuals through television or radio media. Recently, comprehensive tsunami alert systems have been developed that utilize sirens and even text messaging to cell phone users.
U.S. Patent Application 2007/0072583 discloses an emergency reporting system for hurricanes. The system disperses public announcements such as evacuation warnings, evacuation routes and current shelter locations as text messages to cell phone users based on their current location. The application obtains the global positioning system (GPS) coordinates directly from a mobile device and transfers this information to the server. Once the user's position is known to the server, it compares the user's position to the geographic information systems (GIS) database where evacuation zones are stored. The server then assembles and sends a text message back to the user with information about their evacuation zone and whether they are under a mandatory evacuation. Even though this may be useful for hurricanes, this reference fails to solve the problem for tsunami conditions. Unlike hurricanes which allow 24-72 hours to evacuate, tsunami evacuations must be done in 15-30 minutes after a warning has occurred. Thus, the reference's warning system that can send text messages of generic evacuation routes would not help someone in a tsunami since the text message of “seek shelter” isn't personalized enough to suffice. Additionally, telling someone to go to a shelter doesn't help them get out of a danger zone that will be flooded. The shelter could still be in the danger zone.
Thus, the problem of current methods, are that the natural disaster alerts do not provide a personalized service that is capable of directing an individual in a specific location to the nearest dry location based on their current geographic coordinates at the time of the alert. Often, these dangerous situations give rise to the need for efficient navigational instructions that point the user in the direction of safety based on a specified geographic coordinates.